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Saturday, February 1, 2014

Fifty Years Since The Sixties!

The other day I was at physical therapy for my new and improved knee when the oldies station they were playing in the room came on with a Beatles song. I started telling my therapist, who is about the same age as my kids, how every other song on the radio during the winter of 1968-69 was either Hey Jude or Revolution.

And then it hit me. My adolescence was becoming history. Its a very unsettling realization to come to!

I can only imagine how my 85 year old father, Gene Allen, must feel. His childhood and now his young adulthood actually ARE history. I was looking around the Oklahoma Historical Society website the other day (by the way they have fantastic genealogy and American Indian resources) when I saw that they have digitized archived films from a local Oklahoma City television station.
The same station where my father (who started working there in 1950, the year after they went on the air) wrote and produced a series of award winning documentaries. Remember, these are all on film not video and the audio has that shaky quality people of my generation remember from school education films. Nevertheless, if you can look past the early '60's production values..primitive by 21st century standards..you get an amazing slice of Oklahoma history.

Credit: Oklahoma Historical Society

I was too little to have watched them at the time so this was my first look at most of them. When I asked my dad if he knew about this he casually said "oh yes, they gave us a tour when they announced it". Really dad? You're in the freaking historical society!! Also if you're interested in early television in
Oklahoma, Dad did an interview about his experiences during the time when radio was slowly but surely being superseded by the new technology of television. It's pretty fascinating stuff but then I might be just a tad biased....

And speaking of the Beatles and history, this month is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. I was only 7 at the time but even at that young age I was aware of the tidal wave of the British Invasion. I don't remember whether or not I watched the show that night...probably not since my parents had a firm control on the TV remote dial. Even so, Paul McCartney, I will love you forever.